Sámi Blood: Becoming someone else

by Vittoria Scarpa

09/09/2016 - VENICE 2016: The first film by Sweden's Amanda Kernell tells the vibrant tale of a young Lapp girl who dreams of a different life and distances herself from her community with great anguish

Lene Cecilia Sparrok in Sámi Blood

It was in traditional clothes that the cast of Sámi Blood[+see also: trailerfilm focusinterview: Amanda Kernellinterview: Lars Lindstromfilm profile] turned up on the Lido yesterday to present the film in the Venice Days section of Venice, in its world premiere. A touch of colour that accompanied the heartfelt and strongly applauded first work by Swedish director Amanda Kernell, the story of a young girl who, at the age of 14, no longer identifies with her family and dreams of a different life, abandoning her community (and her identity) with courage and anguish.

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We’re in the land of the Sami people, more commonly known as the Lapps, in the northernmost region of Sweden. An elderly lady by the name of Christina (Maj Doris Rimpi) returns to her homeland for the funeral of her sister. It’s not an emotional affair, however. Pleasantries are rushed and Christina is ill-at-ease, impatient to leave as soon as possible to go home. But her home was once there, on those plateaus, with her family, which raised reindeer and sang yoik, the traditional Lapp song. We are told all this in a long flashback which catapults us into the 1930s, when Christina was 14 years-old and called Elle Marja (played by fresh-faced Lene Cecilia Sparrok). Elle Marja and her sister Njenna (Mia Erika Sparrok, Lene’s actual sister) are sent away to a boarding school exclusively for Lapps, where they learn the Swedish language and culture. Whilst Njenna finds it hard to fit in, Elle Marja soon goes to the top of the class: her dream is to become a Swede, move to the city, to Uppsala, and to become a teacher.

The journey of this young woman, however, is fraught with obstacles: the racist attitudes of tall blonde Swedes towards this young girl who is seen as a savage, the way she is ostracised by her teacher (Hanna Alstrom) who, despite recognising the girl’s skill, denies Elle Marja any help in pursuing her studies (because Lapps have smaller brains, she says), and last but not least, the resistance she meets from her proud mother (Katarina Blind), who doesn’t accept her daughter’s emancipation. But Elle Marja pushes forward, demonstrating exceptional determination even though she still looks like a child, small in stature but with fire in her eyes, played beautifully by this debut actress who gives the character just the right dose of maturity, passion and strength, without ever once putting an expression wrong. An intense and blunt coming-of-age story which reveals a relatively unknown page in the history of Swedish colonialism, built on discrimination and the validation of race (the scene in which the protagonist has parts of her body measured is one of the most disturbing of the film), and questions family ties, showing how being tied to your roots is not always a given.

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